Good Boy
by Gunlord500
Summary: Set in the world of Phoenix Point, created by the mind behind the original X-COM, Julian Gollop. Her faithful dog may be the only thing standing between a young woman and an untimely death, but that dog may no longer be a dog, and others may have taken an interest in it...


GOOD BOY

Gunlord500's Unofficial Phoenix Point Fanfic #3, Published on 2/9/2018

Every pained whine Ralphie made was like a knife through my heart.

"The plague's doing a number on him, Claire." Dad was trying to sound tough, trying to sound unemotional, but just from his voice I could tell he was as in as much pain as I was. "We can't let him suffer anymore."

I looked down at Ralphie, laying on his side on the floor of our living room. He let out another whine, letting us know that no matter how bad we were feeling, he was much worse off. His eyes were open and still clear, but all the fur on his tail and his front paws had fallen off, replaced by a reddish, scabrous material that looked too malignant to be just a rash. On his neck, just below the collar that had his name on it, a pair of large, glistening pustules had formed, and any time I reached out to so much as touch them, Ralphie let out a yelp of agony.

I wasn't crying yet, but I would be soon. Dad and I had raised this dog from a puppy—when I was a teenager and just before my mom died—and even though I knew he'd have to go sometime, I never thought it'd be like this.

"It…it's my fault," dad said. He looked at the scars on my arm, proof that I'd contracted the Pandora Plague—or whatever they were calling it nowadays—and lived to tell about it. "I thought we'd be safe away from the cities, but…"

"You couldn't have known, dad. If we hadn't moved out here, maybe we would have all caught it instead of just me and Ralphie. And maybe I wouldn't have lived through it."

"Maybe you're right. Maybe not. But there's nothing we can do now." He picked up the shotgun—the one he'd bought when we first came here, for 'home defense,' but never used—and told me to carry Ralphie outside.

It was a brisk spring day, though I wasn't entirely sure about the date—phone and internet had gone down a little while ago, and we hadn't been keeping up our calendar. The land surrounding our country house was beautiful—rolling hills covered in lush green grass, beside a deep, healthy, verdant wood this region of New England was known for. Out here you wouldn't be able to tell the rest of the world was going to hell, unless you saw the smoke coming up in the sky from the city in the distance, and if you went too far in the woods you'd see that damnable mist creeping in, along with the twisted Pandora vegetation that accompanied it. I'd always loved taking Ralphie out on walks around here (though I never let him get too deep in the forest) and the thought of never being able to do so again was what finally made me break down.

Dad noticed. "Go inside. You don't have to see this."

I wasn't in any condition to refuse his advice. I went back to the living room table and had myself a good cry. So much so that when I finally stopped, the sobs damped down to sniffles, I realized I hadn't heard the gun go off.

Wiping my eyes, I went back outside. My dad was still there, but the gun was hanging limply in his grip. He was staring out towards the woods.

"Dad, what happened?" I asked, careful to keep my steps light and my voice low. "Where's Ralphie?"

Dad turned towards me, and I could see the trails where the tears went down his face. But he seemed as frightened as he was sad.

"Ralphie's gone."

"What do you mean? Did you—"

"No. I didn't think he was still able to walk, but…when I pointed the gun at him, he just took off. Faster than I ever thought he could go. He went straight off into the woods."

I knew what that meant. I'd seen the mist.

"Then there's nothing we can do now, Dad. Hopefully…hopefully something will get him before he can…turn."

We didn't need to say anything else and went back inside the house.

It was about a week after that when my dad started to change too.

Just like with me, it began with a cough. But then I saw the rashes, and I knew my dad had caught it too. I still had hope at the time—I mean, if I turned out to be immune, why wouldn't dad? But one day, while I was doing the dishes, I accidentally dropped one. Not an expensive plate, and we had plenty anyways. My dad heard it, and he stormed into the kitchen, and the look on his face was the scariest thing I'd ever seen. He brought his hands up to my neck—I noticed his fingernails had fallen out and the fingers on his left hand had started to fuse together—and would have started squeezing if I hadn't screamed.

That brought him back to his senses. He left me alone after that, and we didn't talk for the next few days, though I did hear him crying in the bathroom a couple of times.

After that, he left me a note—talking about mom, talking about the plague, and telling me to burn his body—and then went outside and blew his head off with his shotgun, like he hoped to do with Ralphie.

I didn't blame him, not one bit. Not for trying to strangle me that one time, and not for ending it like he did. It wasn't him, it was the Pandora virus. Before we left for the country we'd seen it on the news—those creatures that looked like mixtures of crustaceans and people, the spider-thing with a woman's head that slaughtered a busload of children in China—and we knew what the virus made you do. So I poured some gasoline over my dad's body, lit the match, and let the fire take everything away.

After that it was just me, all alone in an empty house. I wasn't worried about starving, not at all. We had enough potable water and canned goods to last both of us twenty years, and now that he was gone, I could last forty. And I wouldn't be going crazy, either. I enjoyed my dad's company, but I came to live with him because I was worried about him, not because I was lonely. If it wasn't for the plague, I might have been pretty happy all on my own.

But even the plague wasn't what would get me. I knew that. It was the things that came with the plague.

Another week after my dad died, and I knew was no longer alone up here. I started hearing noises coming from the woods—not owls or foxes. Much bigger things. And I saw footprints on the soft soil surrounding my house, prints too big and deep to be made by any human being, but that also had too many toes, or too few, to be from a bear or any other large creature—and none of those even lived up here. At least, they never used to.

The prints were just at the edges of the woods at first. But they came closer and closer every day, and I started hearing them—groans and wails that sounded human, but weren't—at night. I started sleeping with my dad's shotgun ready and loaded under my bed. That wasn't safe, he taught me that, but if they came for me I knew I needed to be ready immediately.

But I also knew that when they came, it wouldn't do me much good.

I don't remember when, exactly, they called my number. It wasn't even while I was asleep, ironically. One night, while I was reading one of my dad's old, old Tom Clancy novels, I heard a banging at my front door. It was quiet at first, but then grew much louder, and I was already up the stairs and barring the bedroom door before I heard the front door crack and splinter. I heard a pained moaning, and heavy footsteps following me up the stairs, and I hoped for a moment my makeshift barricade would hold them off, at least for a little while.

Of course not. Within half a minute a huge, orange-purple pincer tore straight through the bedroom door, the bar behind it, and the dresser I'd moved there as another obstacle,

Now I was grateful I'd kept the gun loaded. As the monster cleared out the last of my makeshift barricade, I leveled the shotgun at what seemed to be its head and fired.

My dad had taught me to shoot, and not to brag, I was pretty good at it. The slug tore right through the creature's head and into the wall beyond, and it immediately dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. As it was bleeding out, I could get a better look at it. It was roughly human-shaped—a torso, two arms, and two legs—and just a bit taller than my dad, but that was where the similarities ended. It was covered in slimy purple exoskeleton, like a crab, and its arms ended in orange pincers, just like a crayfish. I could see thick, corded purple muscles pulsing over its thighs, and below the knees, what looked to be a second knee from which stretched an elongated, chitinous hoof.

Its head was a bloody pulp, so I didn't know what its face looked like. But I'd know soon enough. Two more creatures stepped over its body, and I didn't even wait to look before I started firing again.

But no luck this time—the creatures weren't exactly like the first one. Instead of a pincer on their left arms, they had a thick, armored claw that they held in front of them, apparently made of a stronger material than any I'd ever seen before. It was large enough to cover their entire bodies, and though I fired slug after slug, all my shots just buried themselves in the thick armor of those claws. I didn't have enough ammo with me, and it wouldn't have done any good. I spent my last shot, and then let the gun drop at my feet.

The creatures lowered their claws and advanced on me, and it seemed like I'd at least get a good look at my killers, as good as I could get in the low lamplight of my bedroom. Their faces were human—bald, hairless, and with glowing orbs in the pits of their empty eye sockets, but human nonetheless. They had noses, cheeks, mouths, everything. They even had voices, too. Quiet at first, but getting louder as they crept closer, I heard them both moaning, as if they were in pain, and I thought I even heard one of them say, "Help me."

But then I heard something scrabbling up the stairs, and a low, guttural panting and gurgling—not the moans these crab things made. And they heard it too, and turned away from me.

A moment after that, something…or rather, two somethings…burst through the chests of both creatures and out their carapace-covered backs. Just like the first one, they both went down, limp and dead.

Their killer looked to be something like them—a mutant, but definitely not the same sort of creature. It walked on four legs rather than two, and at first glance, you could have mistaken it for a dog. It had the same basic shape, but it was completely hairless, possessing a hardened red carapace rather than fur. The carapace covered every part of its head, including its eyes, but not its mouth, which had way too many razor-sharp, dagger-like teeth. It had almost human-like hands instead of paws, and no tail. Instead, a pair of slimy tendrils rose from its shoulders, right behind its neck. Those tendrils had been what killed those monsters.

I imagined they could do the same to me. I backed up against the bedroom wall, clutching the shotgun like a club. "S-stay away!"

The creature did not react at all like I expected it to. At the sound of my voice, it cocked its head, and then sat on its haunches.

That, I couldn't understand. I lowered my gun, and as I did so I saw something glinting in the moonlight.

It was hanging off of one of the creature's tendrils. A dog's collar, with a familiar name on it.

"It…it can't be. _Ralphie?_ "

The creature recognized the name, and that was enough to tell me it really was my old buddy. Ralphie trotted towards me on his scaly hand-paws, and sent out one of his tentacles to caress my face. Since he didn't have eyes anymore, I guess they were how he saw the world, now. Anyone else would have been disgusted, but not me. I wrapped my arms around his blood-and-slime covered neck, telling him he was a good boy, over and over. I didn't care what he looked like now. He'd just saved my life. And even if he hadn't, he was still my dog.

Our reunion didn't last long. I shrunk into the fetal position, covering my ears, and Ralphie let out a startled gurgle, when we heard the noise of very rapid, high-caliber gunfire going off in the living room.

I don't know how long I stayed curled up like that, only that I heard another set of footsteps marching up the stairs. And when I looked up, for the first time in weeks I saw another human being.

At least, I think he was human. He looked like some kind of pro wrestler, with tattoos all over his body, and his skin was white. Not white like in white people, I mean white like in alabaster. His eyes were pitch black, his face was covered in tattoos, he was dressed in tattered, XXXXL-size jeans and a vest, and he was pointing a huge machine gun at me.

Ralphie was hunched over me defensively, his tendrils twitching. But the man kept his gun leveled at us, and I think Ralphie knew he couldn't make a move before our newest visitor blew us both away.

"I can see that you are still human. What is your name?"

"You…did you come to rescue me? What was all that noise downstairs?"

He gestured to the corpses on the floor in front of me. "There were a dozen more of those crab creatures in your living room and around your house. I eliminated them all. Would you tell me your name?"

"C…Claire."

He nodded, then looked at Ralphie, making sure not to lower his gun. "Is this your dog?"

I stared blankly at the huge man. "I…what?"

"I asked if you knew this animal."

"Yes, I know Ralphie…I mean…I knew him. But he got sick, and—"

"Most excellent! Your dog has been blessed, sister, and so have you." At last, he finally did lower his weapon. "I have dealt with the creatures in the immediate area, though more will arrive soon. We should have more than enough time to get away. Is there anything in this residence you require?"

"I…what?"

"I mean if there is anything you need to take with you. Food and water would be practical, but we have no need of your weapons—ours are superior, as you will see. But we do not have room for comforts or sentimental trinkets."

"I…wait, okay. First, who the hell are you? I mean, I'm happy you killed those monsters and aren't planning on killing me, but I don't know why you're even here!"

"I worship the Dead God. He has sent us to search for those he has blessed, men and women who have tasted of the plague and yet survived. You are one. We must gather as many of you under our banner as we can, in order to please our God and rescue humanity from its time of trial."

Oh, no. I knew all about these crazy religious cultists—I'd seen a lot of them at college, wandering ministers preaching their very particular brands of fire and brimstone. And even more than that, I was sure I'd heard of these guys before. "Did you say 'The Dead God?' You're one of those Disciples of Anu, aren't you?"

"That is correct."

I shook my head and picked up my shotgun—I hope he didn't realize it wasn't loaded. "Oh, no. No, no no. I read some of your pamphlets back in college. I'm not interested in the apocalypse, mister. I'll thank you again for saving me, but that's where it ends. Just take yourself, your guns, and your religion out of here and leave me and my dog alone."

The fanatic blinked. "But you have been blessed, Claire. Only those truly favored by the Dead God can attune their minds with other elements of His creation, as you have with this animal. The tentacle beast has not been lost to madness—it hears your commands and heeds them. Such a power cannot be allowed to simply languish in the wilderness! We can help you train your gift. You and…Ralphie, can become so much more than you are now. More than just a woman and her pet."

Ralphie started half gurgling, half growling, and I glared at my visitor. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'm pretty happy being just a woman with a pet."

"I was not making a request, sister."

Ralphie's growling grew even louder, and I laid a hand on one of his tentacles to calm him down. "Are you threatening me?"

"Not at all. If you wish, I can simply leave you here. But I am simply stating a fact, not asking anything of you. If you do not come with us, you will die. The mutants will come for you in even greater numbers tomorrow, and not even your…Ralphie will be able to protect you from all of them. And in the unlikely event he somehow succeeds, the night after that even larger creatures will arrive. You have no hope of survival on your own."

The strange man's pitch-black eyes moved over the scars on my arms, and I covered them reflexively. "And no other humans will accept you," he continued. "Even if you survived the plague, many believe those scars mark you as a carrier. And Ralphie? Most havens would simply shoot him on sight. But we, the enlightened faithful of Anu, know the truth that they do not. We understand that you, and the bond you share with your pet, are not abominations or threats. On the contrary, you represent our best hope of salvation!"

He smiled, showing off a mouth full of shiny white teeth that were thankfully still reasonably human. "You may not accept our gift of faith, but we will not force it upon you. You will learn, in time. But we offer you the gift of life, and no-one else can. No matter what you believe, coming with us is your only option…unless you desire to die here."

I glanced at Ralphie. He had stopped gurgle-growling, and now he was back on his haunches, waving his tendrils at the man with something that seemed like...curiosity. He had never been especially bright before—I wondered if the plague had somehow made him smarter, and the extent to which the…changes he'd endured had been more than skin deep.

But it seemed like he was giving my rescuer a chance. And, to be honest, I couldn't escape that logic either. I didn't have that much ammo for my shotgun, and judging by its performance against those crab men, it wouldn't do me as much good as the machinegun these Anu people apparently had.

"Alright," I sighed, "you win. Sign me up. Jesus take the wheel."

The man's smile lessened, slightly, and he shook his head. "Many of Christ's precepts were noble, but he was not a true child of the Dead God. You will see where true divinity lies."

"Whatever." Ralphie and I followed him out of the bedroom and down the stairs, and then we carefully stepped over the blood, guts, and wreckage of what had once been our living room. We exited the house, and saw even more bloody mutant corpses strewn across the ground, and some distance away from the carnage we saw that our ride was waiting: A repurposed transport truck with a trailer just large enough to carry both the big machinegunner and my dog, and whose wheels had been replaced by treads.

I smiled, realizing that this thing might just be able to get me out of here, or at least past the busted roads. I couldn't spend too much time admiring it, though. I saw a woman in the driver's seat of that truck, and judging by the frown on her tattooed face she was getting impatient.

"Follow the nice man into the trailer, Ralphie," I cooed, and my dog let out another soft gurgle, one of his tendrils slapping happily against my face as I scratched the rough carapace under his neck. Just before he did so, though, I had one more question to ask of my rescuers.

"Hey. Big guy. Wait a sec."

He turned to me. "What is it?"

"I never got your name."

He smiled again, though it didn't reach those pitiless black eyes. "Please call me Andax, humble servant of Exarch Abyeus."

I stopped for a moment. I'd never heard either of those names before, but something about them just seemed sinister.

And then I shook my head. It was probably nothing—just the stress from a long, terrible night. I got into the passenger's seat beside the woman, who said nothing but nodded to acknowledge my presence. And then she keyed the engine, and I started off on the journey to become one of Anu's chosen.


End file.
